Today’s meditation on cleansing was very interesting and left me with two distinct impressionable quotes.

Rinsing away dreams is a way of saying that we must not only dispel the illusions and anxieties of our sleeping moments, but those of our waking ones as well.

Recently I realize that whenever I leave my home, I feel as if I’m not present. Perhaps this is just more proof that I am becoming an hikikomori? It’s as if I’m standing there… at the store, the post office, parking lot, etc, but I literally feel as if I’m in a dream; as if I could just face plant the floor and just wake up in my bed moments later. The illusion shrouding around my tired self seems to be masking reality from me sometimes as if it were a thick fog. Being in the moment… waking up the present moment… is certainly something to be worked upon.

After we clear away the obscuring layers of dirt, bodily problems, and delusions, we must be prepared even to clear away the gods themselves so that we can reach the inner One.

Interesting enough, this passage on cleansing the self of impurities… actually ends with saying that even the purities must be cleansed as well in order to reach an even higher level of spirituality. I can’t even imagine what sort of events would lead up to or how it must feel to “clear away the gods themselves” from within our bodies, but until then, I can only strive to clear away the physical and mental impurities first. Proper food and nutrition is certainly a good starting point; eating from a bag of plain salad with chopsticks is not a reparation for having nothing, but frozen chicken the day before.